The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave

After three years of off-and-on development of the DEEP SEKH setting, the game made its convention debut at Mikomicon in 2006. Don and I built fourteen characters for that first game, and everyone involved had fun. DEEP SEKH began to take a whole new shape. Armed with the new experience, I developed eleven more characters, rebalanced preexisting characters, and tweaked the character sheets for more streamlined play.

The DEEP SEKH campaign took on the name “The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave” at Dundracon in early 2007. I found new ways to integrate unusual, niche builds into the game, to make them viable in tournament play. I incorporated a system that would allow characters to make use of knowledge skills on the battlefield, and I incorporated a fairly straightforward, Intelligence-based, “starting equipment” system.

That year’s Anime Expo proved to be another great leap forward, and had one of the largest turnouts for any DEEP SEKH tournament. It proved to be a great attractor of players, too. I think out of all of the events held that year, it had attendance comparable to the Magic and Yu-gi-oh tournaments. It certainly had the largest turnout of any roleplaying games hosted that year!

A great tournament at Mikomicon rounded off the year of advancement for the DEEP SEKH tournament, and heralded new changes to the system, and eventually the design philosophy, that would eventually mean an end of the convention-based DEEP SEKH tournaments, but it would lead to something new, and different. One of my fondest hopes is for DEEP SEKH to make a triumphant return to convention play…

edit: The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave is a reference to the Final Fantasy 7 Battle Square, found in the Golden Saucer.